Legal bills for B.C.’s only francophone school board topped $2 million last year as lawyers prepared for a constitutional battle over education funding that’s expected to start in the fall and last several months.

In its annual statement of financial information, Conseil scolaire francophone (CSF) reports a $2,028,146 payment to Heenan Blaikie, one of the country’s top law firms, during the 2011-12 school year. The previous year, the board paid the same company $695,000 — with the bulk of the money coming from provincial education grants.

CSF, which has 5,000 students in 37 schools around the province, spent more money on legal bills this year and last than any other B.C. school district and the case has yet to go to trial. That’s expected to commence in October in B.C. Supreme Court, and the parties are bracing for at least five months of arguments.

No one from CSF was available for comment Monday, but the former president said in an earlier interview that the decision to spend education dollars on lawyers was a difficult one. Alexandra Greenhill, a school trustee, insisted the board had no choice because it urgently needs more space for its growing student population and additional funds for building repairs and student transportation.

CSF is embroiled in two complicated legal actions that began three years ago. In one, it is a plaintiff, along with parents, and is suing the province for allegedly breaching the constitutional right of francophones to educational services equal to those of anglophones. In the other, it is the defendant in an action launched by a parent group at Rose-des-Vents, CFS’s over-crowded school on Vancouver’s west side.

The school board, which received about $63 million in operating grants from the province last year, is covering the parents’ bills as well as its own. It is also suing the government to recover those legal costs so the money can be spent on education as intended.

In an unexpected twist, the lawsuit has now touched the Vancouver board of education.

CSF is seeking a court injunction that would allow it to move students from Rose-des-Vents into a century-old Vancouver school that’s being vacated at the end of June because it’s seismically unsafe and has been replaced with a new building.

In a petition filed this month in B.C. Supreme Court, CSF asks for an injunction that would force the education minister to order the Vancouver board to lease the old Sexsmith building to the CSF for at least three years. The document says about 160 students from Rose-des-Vents would be moved to Sexsmith elementary for the start of the new school year — a distance of about two dozen blocks.

The unusual petition “came as a real surprise to us,” Vancouver board chairwoman Patti Bacchus said in an interview Monday. “I don’t really understand why it took this fairly dramatic legal turn.”

CSF expressed an interest in Sexsmith in mid-March but when it didn’t get a favourable response, it began legal action. It told the court it had to act quickly because it is running out of time to find a temporary solution to seriously cramped quarters in its west side school.

“There is only one option that can be implemented in time for the start of the 2013-14 school year: That is for the Conseil to lease the current Sexsmith school facility from the VBE,” CSF says in its application.

Earlier, it had proposed other potential locations for a new francophone school — including the provincially owned Jericho lands where West Point Grey Academy is situated — but the province did not accede.

According to Bacchus, the old Sexsmith school is unsafe for students. Indeed, she said the board would have demolished the decrepit building if the city had not requested its preservation as a heritage site.

“It’s a very high-risk building … which is why we are vacating it. It’s not safe for students.”

The district estimated it needs $13 million in upgrades, and Bacchus said the community indicated during community consultations that it would be better repurposed as a gallery or an after-hours adult education centre.

A request for proposals did not produce a satisfactory bid.

There has been no public discussion about leasing the building to another school and Bacchus said that would be essential. She doubts the community would approve of two schools on one property since that would mean more students sharing one playground and additional traffic in the neighbourhood, including school buses.

The bottom line is Vancouver has worked hard to get students out of unsafe buildings, she said. “That would be a concern — as we’re finally getting kids out of that unsafe building to be putting more kids in, whether they’re VSB kids or others.”

It’s for the court to decide if the education minister has the authority to order the Vancouver board to lease its buildings to CSF, she added.

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